From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
EXPANDING
Justine Petersen opened a full service office as part of the the Minority Business Development Center in Peoria, Illinois.
HELPING OUT
Valley Insurance Agency Alliance and three of its agency members — Beacon Insurance, Eclipse Insurance and Mealiff Insurance — partnered with Nationwide and its Nationwide’s Grain Bin Safety advocacy campaign to provide Illinois fire departments with grain rescue tubes and hands-on training. The three tubes cost a total of $15,000 and will be used to help protect against grain entrapments.
First Community awarded $1,500 scholarships to two students attending Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville School of Business.
The Bayer Fund awarded a $150,000 grant to Teach For America to develop and support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) educators in St. Louis city and county.
Mark Mantovani, former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Ansira, was named to the board of the Cancer Research Foundation.
OPENING
The MARSH Grocery Cooperative opened:
• 6917 South Broadway, St. Louis
3Fifteen Primo Cannabis opened a medical cannabis dispensary:
• 5501 Chippewa Street, St. Louis
PROJECTS
KAI designed the new $5.49 million Reby Cary Youth Library in Fort Worth, Texas. In addition to providing architectural and interior design services on the project, KAI coordinated the civil, landscape, structural/mechanical/electrical/plumbing engineering, fire protection, audio-visual, lighting, technology and cost estimating services through various teaming partners. The general contractor was FPI Builders of Fort Worth.
RECOGNITION
The African-American Credit Union Coalition inducted Pier Yvette Alsup, Together Credit Union’s first chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, into its Hall of Fame.
MEDICAL RESEARCH ROUNDUP
Following are some of the medical research grants awarded to area scientists.
Washington University School of Medicine
The scientist: Ramakrishna Kommagani, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and a faculty member in the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences
The grant: four-year, $792,000 grant from the American Cancer Society
The project: to advance the study of endometrial cancer and develop better treatments
The scientist: Shankar Mukherji, assistant professor of physics
The grant: five-year $1.97 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
The project: to increase understanding of cellular design, specifically how a cell commits resources to building new parts and eventually divides into two cells
The scientists: Dr. Eric J. Lenze, professor of psychiatry, and Michael S. Avidan, professor and head of the department of anesthesiology
The grant: four-year, $6.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health of the NIH
The project: to launch the Center for Perioperative Mental Health, designed to help improve mental health in surgery patients, and to conduct studies to identify and treat depression and anxiety in surgical patients